The Johns Hopkins Center for Mind-Body Research (CMBR) unites internationally recognized state-of-the- art expertise and a cross-disciplinary leadership structure to develop a strong, productive intellectual community of mind-body researchers. The CMBR brings together 34 faculty from 16 departments from the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health. The scientific objectives for the CMBR are to understand emotional and cognitive processes affecting health and health-related outcomes, to identify the psychobiological mechanisms linking these processes to health outcomes, and to develop and evaluate innovative interventions to change these processes. The CMBR includes both Research Support Cores (Administration, Biostatistics, Biological Measures, Psychophysics, and Clinical Research Implementation) and a Developmental Infrastructure (Research Support and Education/Faculty Development) to support investigators'research in accomplishing the Center's scientific objectives. During the first phase of our development, these broad objectives have been focused into three inter-related, overlapping, and multi- determined themes for which our Center has strong expertise: negative emotions, sleep disturbance, and neurohormonal stress responses. To further organize our faculty and trainees to accomplish our goals, we have developed two disease/problem-based working groups: one studying cardiovascular disease and the other studying pain. The Center provides shared resources for conceptualizing, implementing, analyzing, and evaluating innovative research that integrates mental and physical dimensions of health. We have generated strong institutional support for our Center through involvement of faculty from the highest levels within the university.